


pools into your open hands

by ethclectic



Category: Hunger Games Trilogy - Suzanne Collins
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-03
Updated: 2015-08-03
Packaged: 2018-04-12 18:41:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,946
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4490496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ethclectic/pseuds/ethclectic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>basically peeta's recollections and  mess of thoughts</p><p> </p><p>because that's just how it is</p>
            </blockquote>





	pools into your open hands

**Author's Note:**

> whoo so my friend recently introduced me to how endearing this canon pairing is, so i wrote a short pretty light hearted ( i hOPE) with some obscure darker themes but really i think only if you squint

pools into your open hands

 

Back home in Twelve with the serene hums of the growing meadows and the greying houses, Johanna Mason calls him, voice clicking into place sharp and harsh and a juxtaposition. He's still not sure when they've formed this camaraderie, but she talks to Katniss too, voice somehow softer as she slips up and calls him Finnick ("Hey do you remember that time you knocked your fucking lightweight self out and woke up in the President's garden?") and he lets it go. 

She told him something while they were at the mercy of the capitol, and it's a thought he holds onto until it's stolen from him.

 

"You're in love with a ticking bomb."

 

/ prelude /

She is small and meek and withering before his eyes, face mocking him as he handles another tray of bread into an oven. Her eyes are slate grey and searching, screaming at him, pleasepleaseplease. It's haunting, alluring, dark, so he throws two loaves of bread to her in hopes of appeasing his sins.

/ act one /

"Cheat to the camera," he says and waves and grins a toothy, boyish smile. The crowds love him, so he tries to smile even bigger to compensate for Katniss's scowl. It's stupid really, what's the good in seeing kids kill other kids, where is the appeal in seeing the descent of humanity? But he still presses his face hungrily to the window and tries to remember the vibrant colours, the sheer boldness of his surroundings. It's such a stark contrast to his dull home, and he imagines swirling icing of the same hues into the canvas of cakes. He knows he won't ever be able to do that again, but he relishes the thought anyway.

She scoffs loudly and glares solemnly, eyes sparking and breath sharp as she hisses, it's not a game. I know, he thinks, and leaves it at that. I know, I know.

Later, they sit at opposite sides of the carriage as Haymitch stumbles and swears and trips over his feet. It's not funny, but Peeta watches all the same. (Katniss is staring out the window, jaw set hard, throat trembling and Peeta pretends not to notice the delicate sheen of wet eyes.)

 

Twelve may have a Victor this year, his mother says and it rings in his head like a mantra, not you not you it chants and coils. Tightens around his neck like hang man's tie.

 

He can't help but despise her just a little.

 

Haymitch asks what they've got later, and really he isn't that hero that Katniss is insisting he is, he's just the baker's son with a penchant for decorating, pretty designs on pretty cakes. He sighs, and it goes unnoticed because that's just how it is.

 

 

To the capital, he's a suave, charismatic charming young man with self deprecating jokes that they laugh at, he clicks so easily with Ceaser Flickerman, they love him and he uses that to his advantage. Thinks of Haymitch's advice and carefully crafts a convincing tale of tragic love. They lap it up and Katniss pushes him into a wall, lips snarling eyes spitting, what do you think you're doing.

 

Whatever it takes.

 

In the games, he is a weakling. He hangs off the stronger bigger better careers like a pesky bug that they can't swipe at just yet. He knows the importance, the significance of his presence there, so he keeps quiet and lets them do what they do.  
At night, he sits silently with his back against the harsh bark of a tree and imagines Cato's furious skyrocketing pulse beneath his fingertips.

 

Hey Lover boy, they screech and call and claw at him. Just kids molded to a standard.

He covers his face with his arms.

 

He sort of gives up hope of the sheer audacity that Katniss will play along, but he still yells for her to go, and in the moment where her fearful eyes connect, he is struck by the resemblance to a shivering starving girl in the rain. A deer caught in the headlights, and then everything goes hazy with blood. (The capitol citizens sigh, cupping their hands against their face and they conjure romances. It is the pivotal point in their relationship, they say, and they're quite right.)

 

Sometimes when his mind is numb from pain, he sees her stumbling across the stones and rocks of his soon to be deathbed. He vaguely remembers the announcement and hopes and prays that someone out there is rooting for them. Vaguely thinks he sees her crouching over him, hair a curtain shielding him from pain and sunlight a bit too glaring for her to be an angel.

 

She ladles soup into his mouth, and he wonders when the roles were reversed.

 

When she kisses him, it's nothing like he imagined. He sees the capital citizens cooing in joy and delight, bets being put and teenage girls mooning over this tragedy, but her lips are cold and unmoving. But she's kissing him nonetheless, and he's been hungry for this for a while. Maybe that's just how it is, so he kisses back like air deprived boy.

 

 

She lies to him, and his mind is cursing, but his brain is succumbing to the lures of sleep so he makes do with glaring his damnedest at her passive face. 

 

Cato has him in a chokehold, his brain is going numb and he's trying to process everything, why doesn't she just shoot them, let us tumble to the death below, save herself? Chivalry, he thinks, and marks a bloody x on Cato's hand.

 

It marks the spot, and Cato disappears into flesh and blood and screams and Peeta feels a little sad at the loss of heat.

 

Later they sit and wait, under the beating of the sun and the heat and then suddenly it's made known that they have to kill one another. Katniss draws her bow and for a moment his heart breaks, then she asks, do you trust me. I don't, he thinks, but then remembers the capital and the stakes,

"Of course," he tries, and it comes out every bit like a charming sad boy.

They hold the berries to their mouths, and ascend in victory, in triumph.

 

 

 

She doesn't talk to him the whole ride back.

 

His heart cracks just a little for some despair to leak out.

 

 

 

It's the second games, and he is standing beside Johanna Mason, who is strangely subdued and quiet, watches the rebel aircraft shoot into the sky, leaving them behind.

 

Of course,

 

Of course.

 

/ act two /

 

He knows now. He isn't stupid, and Katniss was playing him all along, every bit a licentious cruel mistress.

At least, that's what his brain tells him, and its a little hazy round the edges, memories a bit too bright and sharp, but he goes with it.

 

Sometimes if he closes his eyes and thinks till a blinding light, he remembers that while being tortured by these people, Annie screamed for Finnick, he screamed for Katniss, and Johanna had nobody to scream for.

But he shoves those thoughts away, because how can they be true? The capital is kind and generous, they give him luxurious beds and topnotch food. Admittedly he hasn't seen Johanna or Annie in a while, but he assumes they're just in a different wing.

 

 

He delivers a message for them, and doesn't see Katniss' heart burn in an inferno. Doesn't realize that she kinda sorta maybe loves him back now.

 

 

 

They are rescued. And Peeta is angry and a little upset, because now he won't get his thursday meals of beef sirloin and garden rockets. He sees Johanna briefly, small and spindly in the arms of a soldier and wonders when she got so skinny and cut all her hair off.

 

It's a new look, his brain hisses, and he goes with it, because that's just how it is.

 

 

They place him in a room separate from Annie and Jo, and some girl with cheeks that looked like they lost a significant amount of roundness and imploring eyes visits him. She tries to talk about Katniss, sometimes, and jerks away violently when he starts up. It's probably routine by now, seeing yellow dress gir - Dellia or Belly or some other name he doesn't bother with, so he hisses and curses aimlessly.

 

Never does he ache for Katniss the way she does for him now, and she wonders when the roles have reversed.

 

 

Vaguely, suddenly, he is hit by a burst of memory. Colours swirling bloody red and aqua as Johanna, whose riding the high of morphling again, and her mocking voice creeps into his mind. Something about love, something about a bomb, something about Katniss.

 

He brushes it off, and does not comfort Jo as she stares unblinkingly at the ceiling after Finnick Odair's death. Love is overrated, anyway.

 

 

 

After a while, the truth starts unveiling itself, and it's like someone wrapped a cleverly placed cloth around his eyes and he's stumbling now, in the glaring brightness of enlightenment and realisation.

 

 

Real or not real, he starts up a game, and it's a fun way to pass the time as he hollows yet fills himself up in the sickly white of the bed. Katniss visits him, dark hair limper as she eyes him carefully, like he'll break any moment, like he'll lash out at her. She tries to smile at him, but he just grimaces a little before remembering the truth, and he quirks a lip tentatively back.

It's back to the beginning, and

 

 

he thinks he may be f a l l i n g all over again.

 

 

 

Prim came first, before Gale, before him, before the capital and the games. That's what he tries to remind himself as he sees Katniss sing herself hoarse, hands clutching at her chest and the ghost of a girl who was there and then wasn't.

 

Sometimes he imagines Prim's last moments, (is this how it feels to burn?), closes his eyes and tries to convince himself that Katniss loves him the same.

 

He tries to whisper soothingly, tries to understand the stoic being of Gale Hawthorne, wonders if he is being consumed with guilt, like its eating up his insides the way Katniss makes him feel. He sighs loudly and plops down onto the bench, sliding his tray of mush and grey down and Johanna sighs, voice brash and mean but somehow weaker.

 

" so fuckin' dramatic".

 

He can't help but agree. He doesn't say anything to defend himself, and that's just the way it is.

 

 

 

/ epilogue /

He fixes Katniss eventually, bits and bobs being fitted into her jigsaw, two broken beings somehow held together by flesh and bone and blood and loss. It's nice knowing someone who's hands commit the same crimes as him, it's tender and serene and not exactly what he hoped for, but he's not complaining.

 

(Johanna and Gale swear they aren't together, but he sees the way other don't how they glance at each other, sly eyes and mischievous smiles curving over a glass. He wonders if he and Katniss are the same, and concludes that they aren't. Because Katniss is a shell and he is a void and they've somehow merged together to hobble their way through life.)

 

Katniss kisses his cheek and children run in the graveyard meadows of Twelve, and he realises that they've both been doing the fixing all the while.

 

I love you, she says mildly, eyes vacant and thoughtful as she stares at the impending sunset, I love you, he thinks, and lays his head amongst the lull of leaves and wildflowers.

 

 

That's just how it is.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks a ton for reading and do tell me your thoughts


End file.
